


Getting It Right

by Severina



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Community: 25fluffyfics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-03
Updated: 2007-06-03
Packaged: 2017-10-10 12:28:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/99731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes them five years, but they finally figure it out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Getting It Right

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Etharei](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etharei/gifts).



> Post Season Five  
> Written for LJ's 25FluffyFics community, and for etharei for her birthday  
> Prompt 18: Gift

Justin turns 21 in New York City.

The first thing he does is stand over the sink in his tiny walk-up and gleefully burn his fake ID.

Then he celebrates at an exclusive club in the village, but his friends make sure to mention that it's his birthday and he gets free drink offers from every guy he meets. He takes most of them up on it. He fucks a bleached blond in the bathroom, sends the pseudo-surfer on his way, and then spends ten minutes staring at his shoes, certain that the last Grey Goose and tonic has sent him over the edge and he's going to vomit all over the pretty blue tiles.

The moment passes, and he dances until four a.m.

He considers calling Brian when he gets home, because phone sex sounds really good at 4:37am, but then he realizes that he can't actually feel his dick, so he decides to give it a miss.

Four days later, the magazines start arriving in the mail. _ArtForum_, _NYArts_, _Art Scene_ \-- every glossy-paged overpriced publication that's he ever drooled over, flipped through once, or mentioned in passing, all with his name neatly typed on the cover as "subscriber." All the magazines that he could never afford on a waiter-slash-artist's salary.

He doesn't stop smiling for three days, and the canvasses that he is working on for an upcoming show take a decidedly upbeat turn.

* * *

Brian turns 33 in Pittsburgh, in the middle of what the newscasters call "BlizzardMania!" complete with animated scowling storm clouds.

He intends to go in to work anyway, because there is still copy to write and boards to approve and underlings to terrify, but his car is buried under five feet of snow and his driveway is indistinguishable from the front yard. At that moment, he hates Britin with a burning passion.

He watches the progress of the storm on WPXI instead, and after twenty minutes he wants to throw his television out the window. And he would, except the ice pellets have frozen the windows shut. And when the power goes out, mercifully cutting off the squeakily excited voice of the parka-clad correspondent reporting from the temporary shelter at the Penn Center, Brian thanks Mother Fucking Nature and that downed power line for saving him television replacement costs in the thousands.

He's wrapped in several blankets and pleasantly blitzed when the knock comes on the door.

He signs for the package and, as the delivery guy struggles his way back through the drifts, Brian makes a mental note to switch all of Kinnetik's important deliveries to Fed-Ex.

The painting of Gus -- resplendent and proud and cocky and beautiful in his mini-mite hockey uniform -- is exquisite (but then, Brian has always said that Justin is a genius.) But it is the puck mounted next to the painting, autographed with Gus's five-and-a-half-year-old scrawl, that makes him press his lips together and clutch the frame and blink and tell himself that it's just the wine and weed that's made him maudlin.

* * *

Two months later, Justin brings several issues of _Art Scene_ in his carry-on for the short flight home, and when Brian fucks him against the desk in his office at Britin, he sends up a short and silent prayer that the frame mounted on the wall doesn't fall off and bean him in the head.

It takes them five years to figure out the birthday shit, but when they finally get it, they get it right.


End file.
